


Ephemera

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AF GUYS, AU, M/M, and keith talks about his favorite words, fluffy af, in which hunk talks lance into being part of his drag show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 14:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13614951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: In which Lance falls in love for a night and Keith believes in serendipity. // klance, modern au, fluffy af, a little quickie in betweenwhen we see the seaupdates!!





	Ephemera

* * *

 

EPHEMERA

***

Lance is not sure how it happened, but Hunk convinced him to be part of his drag show Saturday night.

It’s on Broadway, between Pine and Pike Street, the club — a place washed cool blue and purple and pink, colored lights that pulse to the music. A humble little stage, framed by light tresses and tangled cords, fat speakers, but it makes up for it in the smooth stretch of the dance floor, the high ceiling to which bone-song beats throb. A little mezzanine overlooking the floor, where the bar hides. And many, many, _many_ more tipsy sweaty dancing laughing faces than Lance expected for a local drag show lip sync battle night.

Yay.

It’s close to Halloween, so the theme is fears. Hunk hates spiders; he’s got makeup like clustered arachnid eyes going across his brow. Cramped in a friend’s living room prefunking before heading out Lance helped him color in the creepy pupils — creative liberty — and then let Hunk’s co-queens glitter him up while Hunk finished with his contouring and dramatic eyeshadow. He really does look amazing when he does shows; and no one would ever _ever_ suspect from his tattoos or goofy grins how he spends his weekend nights or how fucking good he is at it.

And Lance is not sure how it happened, but here he is, on the stage, in the background, dancing against a backdrop of cheap Halloween outlet store cotton spider webs like a fly caught for dinner. There’s another one of Hunk’s acquaintances on the other side, doing the same thing. He’s a little better at it. He’s actually a go-go. Lance is just a childhood friend, or whatever a friend from high school who is still a close friend and now a college roommate is. He and this other guy match, prettied up in cut-up black muscle tanks and cut-up blue jeans and glitter glitter glitter.

The music pounds.

Deafening, deep, hypnotizing beyond explanation, the club is another realm of existence, really, something sort of dreamlike and otherworldly. Night creatures, sparkling and colorful and unafraid, and Lance wishes the lights were a little brighter so he can’t see faces in the crowd on the dance floor —

There’s a guy staring right at him.

Lance can see him, not very _well_ , but God damn he can _feel_ him looking. Swivel of lights, a new song bursts into being, and the crowd cheers. Suddenly Lance is extremely self-conscious and keenly aware of the way he moves against the spider webs. Distracted. Much hotter up here.

Hunk’s laugh is a contagious thing, wholehearted and full; the mic catches it, sends it around the room through the music, as he and the D.J. banter a little back and forth between song request shouts from the dancers and drinkers.

And the guy down there just watches Lance, a figure standing perfectly still in the swirl of music and excitement and lights — dark, tousled hair tucked behind both ears but still falling in his face, eyes like an owl’s: deep and penetrative, riveting. He just stands there, flash of lights off the drink in his hands. Wrinkled, faded Rolling Stones T-shirt, short enough to flirt with the cut of his hip bones where a flannel shirt is knotted over the waistband of jeans ripped to show fishnet mesh leggings crisscrossing his skin underneath. 

He’s still just standing there off to the sidelines when Hunk’s set is done and he heads up to the bar talking and laughing with people, to get water, to work the crowd like the loveable pro he is as the next queen sets up, accept dollar bills tucked in every curve and corner of his body.

And Lance is not sure how it happens, but he’s standing there in front of the guy, staring back. And Lance is not sure how it happens, but they’re dancing together. And Lance is not sure how he suddenly remembers how to dance better than playful background for Hunk, but maybe it’s the way the guy’s body seduces him easily into the same rhythm, the same glide, the same simple, sensual motion. Somehow Lance has gotten glitter on him. Night creatures. Everything in here so surreal and unreal and yet utterly raw and real. The guy cocks his head back and laughs and the thudding beat swallows up the sound but by the way the smile lights his owl-eyed face, Lance can imagine what sort of music it is.

***

Keith lets things happen the way they’re supposed to happen, and what happens is they stumble and fast-walk the fifteen-minute trip down to Merchant’s bar, tipsy but not too drunk to forget how they feel.

Electric.

“Keith,” he introduces himself as they stand together at the bar waiting for their drinks, in the dark and the noise that makes anonymity so easy at night.

“Lance,” the guy replies, and his hair is a finger-combed mess and his voice is raspy in the best of ways, the kind of way that says he laughs a lot. Keith can smell his skin — tang from dancing, pheromones, cologne. In the low lights he still glitters. Like the way his blue eyes dance as he watches Keith pound a shot of vodka.

“I think I’m in love,” he says dreamily.

“No,” Keith says back, voice rough before he clears it of the vodka burn, leans forward on his arm and offers Lance a little half-smile. “You know this place is haunted?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, in the basement.”

Lance turns and heads to the stairs, almost faster than Keith can keep up. The steps creak and snap underfoot, it’s the oldest restaurant in the city, and —

“ _Boo!_ ” Lance says, breathily, popping around the corner where the stairs turn into the basement, and Keith jumps, staggers back and grabs at the wall to keep his balance, eyes wide.

Lance laughs, and maybe it’s the vodka, but down here away from the roar of a Saturday night under red walls, slant of harsh white light from the basement kitchen and its clatter of dish-washing — his laugh is spellbinding. Keith is lost in the charismatic shiver of it.

They missed the night’s last ride on the Ferris Wheel at the pier, so they take the link rail up to the University where they can grab Lance’s car.

“What’s your favorite word?” Keith asks as they wait against the wall to sneak onto the train without swiping transit cards.

Lance’s brow dimples; a cockeyed smile dimples the rest of his face with it. It’s handsome and adorable at once. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about having a favorite word.”

Ripped muscle tank, ripped jeans, cat-eyed smirk and smooth olive skin. A rustling chuckle that so easily becomes a bouncing laugh. Glitter. Glitter in his hair, on his throat, in his dark eyelashes. The way his hands are not too big nor too small for his lean, cut, bare arms. The way his jeans form to his body in a perfect accent to muscle and curve as he stands near one of the benches, as a bus blows by and kicks up the wind around them.

“Mine’s ‘ephemera,’” Keith says over the noise of it.

Lance has a car with a moonroof, and Keith is still buzzing in his fingertips from the last drink he had at Merchant’s and he says, “Open it up.”

Lance does, turns up the music as Keith undoes his seatbelt and climbs to stand on the seat, stretching up out of the car into the night. Lance’s eyes dart from the road to Keith and back again and he laughs above the wind and the music with a disconcertingly charming blend of trust and worry, “You’re crazy!”

Keith does not shout, or anything else cliché. He just stands there leaning back with elbows propped on the back of the roof, squinting into the night wind as it caresses his face and below him Lance drums the steering wheel to the music.

***

Under the looming structure of Aurora Bridge is one of the city’s secret treasures — the Fremont troll. They park down the hill and hike up the crooked, broken sidewalk, the sound of the bar district on the other side a thin murmur of life in the streetlight dark. The troll is a colossal statue by local artists, a giant, well, _troll_ made of steel and concrete, dusted in dirt, squatting in a little hill that stretches up to meet the over pass of bridge. Round hanging nose, unseeing stare, an old-school VW Beetle tucked in its fingers like tree roots of stone. One little glinting eye made of a tire hubcap.

They climb to sit on its head, twenty feet off the ground. Everything faded gold where the streetlamps pool, can’t reach the top of the troll, so they sit in grayness. Faded band T-shirt, fishnet under jeans. Keith has a perfect heart face under all that dark hair; it flips up under his ears and along the nape of his neck in a natural little wave. And now that there are no lights blinding Lance, he can see just how deeply blue his almond eyes are — indigo, almost. Endless like a night sky.

“Ephemera,” Keith says, leaning back with hands planted firmly on stone, to stretch his legs out over nothingness. If either of them fell, they’d break more than one bone, for sure. “It comes from ancient Greek. Means something that doesn’t last.”

He is quiet a moment, squinting out into the darkness directly across the street, that follows the steep hill down away from the three-way stop under the bridge at the foot of the troll sculpture. And Lance cannot stop falling in love with the shape of his face, the softness to it cradled by firm jaw and strong shoulders. The flicker of his lashes, the sneak of skin where his shirt flirts with knotted flannel. Why the fishnet, he wants to ask. Why ephemeral. Why doesn’t it last.

Keith looks at him, slowly. Face serene in that owl way, not really peaceful but not really all that expressive. Just sort of — looking. He raises his brows. He’s not expecting an answer.

Lance leans over, and Keith’s lips part in a tiny breath of welcome for Lance’s mouth against his.

Sweet skin, faint lingering tang of alcohol, hot hot hot dry and soft and searing its shape into Lance’s and tickling breath and the way Keith leans back a little before leaning forward again. They kiss. And they kiss. And there’s a little dart of tongue, just enough to coax Lance closer. Lance lets the taste of him fill his mouth, the smell of him fill his head. It feels like their kissing was made to work together.

They break away with a little sound of pursed lips, a bump of Keith’s nose and the faint dimple in his right cheek that Lance has been falling in love with all night when he smiles. It’s an elusive thing. A night creature thing. Ethereal. Ephemeral. Surreal unreal real.

Face flushed, and a bit breathless because he forgot to breathe when the electricity finally jolted between them, Lance laughs faintly, signals with a tip of the head.

“Sorry,” he says. “I got glitter on your mouth.”

Keith licks it off.

“Call it a night?” he murmurs after that. Not like he wants to go. More like he thinks he needs to go before they end up kissing again, maybe more.

***

Keith did not expect it to happen this way.

A week and a half later, Lance standing at the coffee bar where he baristas, waiting for Keith to finish his espresso drink. Keith hasn’t even started the espresso drink. They’ve just sort of been standing there staring at each other for what feels like too long but has really probably only been five or so seconds in the hiss and buzz and city murmuring of a hole in the wall coffee shop.

“Oh,” Lance says.

“Hi,” Keith replies, hoping maybe Lance won’t notice the way the heat is creeping up his neck into his face, flustered. And not in a bad way. He wonders if he’s like a different person in the daylight, and if it’s in a bad way. Hair in a ponytail that doesn’t want to be a ponytail, tie dye T-shirt and blue jeans and chatter and clatter of the coffee shop. Real person. Lance is like a different person in the daylight. Not in a bad way. Cinnamon hair and tan skin, flickering blue glances and a little half-smile. A confidence to the way he moves, a regality to his denim jacket and gray hoodie, hip cocked to one side with all his weight on one pedestal foot. No glitter. Smell of familiar skin. Real person —

“I looked up the word,” Lance says as he takes his drink, and Keith stops looking at his mouth. “Ephemera. It also means like, something that wasn’t meant to last but becomes collectible, valuable, ends up lasting anyway. Like postcards. Coins. Concert tickets.”

Keith stares at him, hands limp on his side of the coffee bar. Blushing faintly. A little startled. Pleased beyond expectations. Sheepish for it. Awkward.

“You still in love in the daylight?” he finally asks, voice faint and thick on his tongue as a coy little smirk plucks at one side of his mouth.

Lance shrugs. “I’d have to take some time and find out,” he says, so smooth.

Serendipity is a word that means things falling into place by a fluke.

* * *

 


End file.
